VMware released a new paper about Microsoft licensing issues on the new VMware Community.
Here the summary:
As VMware software adoption in the Enterprise accelerates, the issue of support for Microsoft software running in VMware virtual machines is raised frequently.
• We believe this is not a technical issue. The reality is that Microsoft has responded to support calls from customers, running applications in virtual machines.
• IBM, Dell, and HP all have support offerings for Windows running in a VMware virtual machine.
• There are tools and procedures available to replicate virtual machine workloads on physical platforms.
In recent months, VMware has received some questions regarding Microsoft support for Windows operating systems and Microsoft applications running inside VMware virtual machines. Many of these questions are fueled by the rapidly-growing deployments of VMware virtual infrastructure in production and mission-critical environments.